Nearly 25 years ago, when Valentino Achak Deng was six years old, his village in Southern Sudan was razed by the murahaleen, paramilitaries working for the government in Khartoum to suppress the Sudan People's Liberation Army. Achak was separated from his family and driven from his home; he was lucky not to have been killed. The people of Marial Bai, like the inhabitants of thousands of other villages across Southern Sudan, were suspected, if not of being rebels themselves, then of providing the rebels with material support. The arrival of the murahaleen was 'like a shadow made by a low cloud. The shadow moved quickly over the land. The rumbling was horses. I saw them now, men on horses, bringing the land into darkness.' The speaker is Achak, though the voice is not entirely or straightforwardly his own. What Is the What is both the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng and a novel by Dave Eggers; a collaboration between the two men, as well as between memory and imagination.

LRB 21 June 2007 | PDF Download